


the most dangerous thing

by yerimoney



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: F/F, PATROCHILLES AU!!!, That's it, but im not finishing this so, sooyoung is literally unkillable and joohyun defines her empathy, u never have to read that part!!!, yeah joohyun d1es
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29234637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerimoney/pseuds/yerimoney
Summary: “what do you want?” she asked last night, back pressed against the wall. joohyun followed the bob of her throat with every breath she took and kissed her right there and then.
Relationships: Bae Joohyun | Irene/Park Sooyoung | Joy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	the most dangerous thing

**Author's Note:**

> bear in mind im no longer seriously writing for joyrene so this is literally one out of many unfinished drafts i'm publishing just because i want to have it over with. yes i'm aware this only spells the beginning of the fic and no crucial parts are written but i suppose i can add the playlist for the entire fic and you can figure out the rest of the fic yourself. if you guys want me to continue this.... well. idk D: 
> 
> (it's not that i hate this fic this is actually my favorite fic out of all fics its just that im a busy person so i doubt i'll ever finish it please don't hate me <3)

the doors burst open. “your majesty! your majesty.”

jaemin stops his conversation with the rest of the advisors, holding a hand up. he turns his head to the guard. grants his purpose attention.

the guard in front of him puffs and heaves, as if he’s ran all the way here. if that is so, what he comes for must bear much value.

“the general,” he chokes out. “it’s the general.”

“sooyoung?”

…

sooyoung’s feet teeter along the edge, her toes just almost in midair. she looks down at the grounds nine feet below, her chest heaving. each breath is heavy, and every intake of air feels like a grasp to stay alive.

she can hear the citizens behind her, some in exclaiming in horror, some shouting for her to come down. it’s surprising no one has stayed silent. this is a free win after all.

there is no one on the land where she looks below. it’s barren and empty, something she’d made sure of when she knocked those city guards unconscious. 

it’s strange... she can’t quite remember how she got here. but she does remember so vividly emotion that tore through her, begging her to take herself to the highest point she could find. and this was it.

the city walls of troy. she’ll die a step off enemy ground.

the wind whips against her face, rendering her hair flown. she feels it cold, and bitter, cutting into her bones. maybe it was always meant to be this way. her heart pounds and her eyes water, and her mind is a cavern of violent scrawl, almost comparable to the power real chaos has ascribed himself with.

maybe it was always meant to be this way.

…

the wind is always swift in troy.

it’s unwelcoming, most of the time aggravated. sooyoung supposes it’s because they’re here. even gods can take sides.

(she knows that. she’s made them take it before.

_ am i not your daughter?  _ she’d asked. her mother had smiled at her, sadly.

_ oh, sooyoung. you’ll know you are. _ )

the wind beats against them, causing their hair to whip around their faces. no matter. sooyoung can still see with the vision of an eagle, everybody knows that. it’s why the woman beside her says nothing, only gazing out towards the sea as she is, letting her feet slowly sink her into the sand as it does sooyoung too.

moments like these are untouchable. not in the way sooyoung normally feels, not in the way people have shied away from her with all their whispers and all their praises, staring as she walks past in golden armour. 

in the rip of the tide, joohyun speaks.

“we have to do it,” she murmurs. “they’ve taken themselves to our ships. we won’t get out alive unless we turn the tide.”

sooyoung watches as the waves crash onto one another, killing each other for a temporary glory. it doesn’t take too long for her to answer, she already knows what it should be. “you are to beat them back,” she interposes.

“yes.”

“you do not go beyond the city walls.”

silence comes long and looming. joohyun’s hesitation speaks too much in volumes.  _ “joohyun,”  _ sooyoung commands, jaw clenched. “that’s an order.”

“do soldiers take orders from a leader who will not fight?”

the wind throws droplets of seawater onto their faces, salty and unrelenting. sooyoung tastes bitter on her tongue; as if joohyun would know anything about leading. “you would fight without me.”

“no,” joohyun punctuates, her head finally turned towards sooyoung, her eyes sharp and unwavering. “you would fight without me.”

sooyoung has never been able to hold her gaze with her. her mouth parts but nothing comes out, she’s forgotten what to say. she closes it and instead drifts her attention to the brown flecks in her dark eyes.

it takes her only a moment to realize she’s slipping, to realize that joohyun is staring at her differently too, those eyes focused somewhere else. in moments like these, they’re somewhere else, she knows it. in moments like these, they are not the legionnaires they are now. 

they were children once. a long, long time ago.

she’s grateful joohyun doesn’t speak in these moments.

because one question would let strip honor away like a lion’s skin off her back, take its effect off her and her feet upon barren land for the bloodstain of a thousand other men. she finds it twisting to the heart, the fact that she’s been fighting for a cause she doesn’t believe in for joohyun.

enough of that. she turns away, setting her gaze on the crashing waves again. “go,” she sets forth. “you have my assent.”

the tide engulfs the previous one. joohyun stays silent, but sooyoung can tell she’s accepted what’s to be.

“we set out once the sea calms,” the soldier beside her states. “i’ll come back when we’re done and we set sail as swiftly as we can.”

“and you hold your word to that.”

joohyun laughs, her voice like tinkling bells, and sooyoung’s heart drops. “you hold your prayers for me first. i have a feeling poseidon will need more than convincing today.”

this won’t end well, will it?

she doesn’t know what it is that bubbles up within her, reaching for joohyun beyond what her body lets her. her feet are still stuck in the sand. her hands stay still by her sides. but something within her is desperate, as from the corner of eye she catches joohyun on the verge of turning away.

“you have my armor,” she speaks abruptly, the sentence as rare as she herself would ever think of saying it too soon. but it’s the first thing she thinks of, and it’s the first thing her brain grasps at, shoving it out of her mouth terribly in an attempt to make joohyun stay. 

but she can’t make her stay. she knows that all too well. so if her efforts are to be little, they should at least be dedicated to keep joohyun safe.

joohyun stops in her tracks. “your armor,” she pronounces, carefully. gives each word its weight. “you would give me that.”

“i’ve given you more,” she refuses to meet joohyun’s eyes this time. “the armor will scare the trojans away. what’s left to do is up to you.”

everyone is afraid of her. that’s one thing she’s valuable for.

joohyun hums in affirmation again, though just a little bit short of certain. “you think highly of me.” she says this as her expression of gratitude.

“my armor for your word.”

“by ares! as far as you go, sooyoung, you seem to think i’m not a good fighter,” she jokes.

(joohyun is not a good fighter. ‘swounds, it doesn’t fucking matter if she’s good. she’s not a fighter. sooyoung had taken that away from her a long time ago.)

“i don’t doubt that.” sooyoung brushes away a strand of hair from her face. “i’d think highlier of you if you’d keep your word. is that not enough?”

“and i will,” joohyun turns and begins walking back to sooyoung’s tent. “but you’d think highlier of me if i won for you, would you not?”

she can already feel the smirk on joohyun’s lips. she continues to stare ahead anyway. “better to do a little,” she warns finally, “than a great deal badly.”

the other woman joins in with a saying of her own in jest, her tone playful. it’s reminiscent of when sooyoung was still a student and banter held no real value to the both of them. “and fortune favors the brave.”

(joohyun is not brave.)

as lightning strikes and waters rage and heartbeats tick on, joohyun slips from sooyoung’s hands.

…

joohyun is sent to mount pelion as an envelope of mercy.

she should not be here, she knows that well. she’s seen the stares and whispers from the passersby as they walked past her in that little alley of stained blood. the point of their fingers, those that were stiff and bony, making the link between her sitting on the ground and the corpse lying beside her.

they wanted her gone. she should’ve been gone. sitting in that dark cramped alley, she’d imagined she’d suffer a fate worse than this. she’d imagined her name gone and her bare feet on foreign land, as all the other people slanted their eyes and turned their back on her, looking away.

after all, no one wants a murderer.

but with the hours of exhausting travel by carriage and by foot, joohyun still can’t quite make out if this is some sort of newly-invented punishment. if the audience did not give her up, her father certainly did  — given her to the king, she realized as soon as the sack over her head was taken off and her eyes took in the beauty of what could have only been the palace walls. gilded gold.

“i am to put you into exile,” he had noted, his eyes never leaving joohyun’s. “but your father has pleaded with me for pardon of any sort. in phthia, that could mean anything.”

joohyun does not speak. chooses not to speak. she knows of power those in higher ranks hold, her father is part of it, she was close to be part of it. but she knows in front of the king, that is all to be abandoned for a sliver of reverence.

”yes…” the king lift a hand to caress his chin, as if thinking. “that could mean anything.” when his focus returns, he notices something.

“you have a strong gaze,” he remarks.

she keeps her mouth shut, but her eyes don’t shift away. it’s funny enough; she can’t bring herself to look away. and she should, because she’s heard of the fools who have thought themselves the same levels as gods, monsters and their birth of kings. she’s never seen them before because they don’t quite live to tell the tale.

but joohyun is a soldier, and if you take your eyes away from the enemy you’re half-dead. and she can see her father standing by the door, and if she shows anything but strength, what does that speak of his army?

and the king owes her a pardon; he knows as well as her. and she’s waiting.

after what seems like the most agonising time of her life (forty-two heartbeats, she counted) he speaks. “i’d like you to travel to mount pelion,” he speaks slowly, with grace upon her.

“i have a daughter there. she lives within the nook of the mountain, training under chiron. it’s by the spring, you can tell when you’ve reached. my men will guide you there, but once you’ve arrived, they will return and you will not.

“i... my daughter is around your age. it would be nice for her to have a companion. you know how to fight, do you not? she’ll need to learn how to fight someone that’s not half-horse.”

and so here she is, where the smell of spring and fruit waft past her nose and the sun is a little bit clearer. suspiciously so, for this corner is well hidden from the rest of the world.

and for what reason? how come has no one ever heard of the king’s daughter, and why has he never spoken of it? 

and who is she? and why is she taught by a hero’s teacher?

(joohyun knows the obvious answer. but she is no fool. she’ll believe what she can see.)

a few more tired steps across rocky and jagged ground is when she sees it — a single stream of water, splashing onto the lake below at the edge of the mountain. she comes close and turns, seeing the view that spreads before her.

the sky at this time at its dimming glow, indicative of a dying sun. the day is ending soon for the moon to rise over the stretch of land she can see, dotted by natural scapes and the spires of the buildings of her former land.

she could stay here for a while. she’s been told by the king’s men that the grounds she seeked were just behind the trees that surrounded the lake, so by technical terms it would not serve her harm to stay here and watch the sun dip into nonexistence.

she shakes her head and buries the thought. she came here to follow the king’s orders, to arrive by sundown. she’d be cursed if she threw away a chance like this again, a chance so rarely offered to someone of her nature. and so she walks.

the trees clear to reveal a scene simpler than she’d thought it be: a cabin large and well enough to accommodate a prince, and the courtyard beside it. so once she’s taken that in, her eyes cannot help but slip towards the action that takes place in front of her.

it catches her breath — she is no stranger to combat, but the fight taking place in front of her is much swifter and more graceful than the clumsiness of soldiers she’s had to witness back home. there’s a clashing of swords faster that she can see, and in a minute the opponents have already switched positions, taking only some time before striking. and she can see them: a centaur and a warrior.

(she said she would believe it when she saw it. if she be honest, she wouldn’t quite believe what she was seeing right now.)

her mouth is still parted in surprise when the fight ends as fast as it went. the centaur notices her. he trots over, appearing as all creatures of nature do (majestically strange). his tail flicks and joohyun notices, shifting her eyes to it almost immediately.

“erhem,” he coughs. 

she glances up. with the body of a horse, centaurs could be _tall_ — and chiron intimidatingly so. his eyes were dark, with a hint of chocolate brown that joohyun suspected only showed on good days. they stared as if they were expecting something. did short centaurs exist? 

“you are the companion that the king sent?”

_ kneel,  _ the voice in her head tells her, and she immediately gets to it. placing one knee on the ground, she leaves her head hanging low and speaks with a loudened voice. “i’ve come to serve his daughter.”

she hears a hum. when she raises her head again, chiron has moved away. her line of vision is cleared so, and her eyes immediately land on the next person.

(she said she would believe it when she saw it. with the fury of the fight gone, she can see it clearly now.)

her skin is of a soft glow, and her hair is as smooth as a nymph’s. yet her figure speaks of power, with her back broad and her muscles lean. they ripple as she bends down to pick up the swords on the ground. her posture is only as graceful as just short of a god, if not at the same level. her hands are careful but strong, carrying the handles of the swords as if they could fall anytime.

when she finally catches joohyun’s gaze, the picture is completed perfectly. and joohyun can believe it: the king’s daughter is a demigod. she radiates divinity at its finest.

and that must be why she’s been hidden so long, joohyun pieces together, because no one could gain so many favours from the gods and get away with it.

her face is sculpted as if from the creation of pygmalion. bright eyes and full lips, it’s no doubt she’s the king’s daughter. her face is round and soft, and fits perfectly into the royal family. there’s an uncanny resemblance there, between the face she stares at now and the one she held her gaze with in the palace just a few nights ago.

the girl stands, swords in hand. she places their sharp tips on the ground and then places her arm on the butt of the handle, leaning her weight into the action. but she speaks not. joohyun doesn’t blame her — how would anyone react to acquiring a friend?

so she speaks first. “your majesty.”

she hears the grate of a hoove against the ground and she winces at the dust that reaches her eyes. she blinks, but doesn’t look back down. 

chiron seems restless, for some reason.

“there’s no need for that,” the girl replies. her stance turns somewhat uncomfortable on the support of the swords. “call me sooyoung.”

“stand,” chiron says. she responds immediately. “the king told me you can fight. can you?”

“i was trained in my father’s army.”

“and what is your name?”

she swallows. sooyoung is still staring at her. “joohyun.”

she hears a sharp intake of breath from the centaur beside her. “ah. daughter of the argonaut.”

that’s piqued sooyoung’s interest. her gaze instantly changes from its previous state of impassive examination. “the argonauts? that...” her eyes are wide and her expression is settled in bewilderment, as if she was hearing of a legend. (it is a legend. joohyun just doesn’t have the right as claimant anymore.) “wow.”

her stance changes once again, almost leaning forward in curiosity. “what are you doing here, then?”

well, she can’t tell her, can she? she can’t taint a hero more than she’s tainted her name already.

she settles for what they all know. “i came here for you.”

there comes that calculating gaze again. as if sooyoung suspects she’s not telling the truth. 

once chiron realizes the conversation has gone stale, he takes his leave. “i’ll leave you to it,” he walks away, “you may spend the night to get acquainted. i suppose joohyun will be here with you for a long time, sooyoung.”

once he’s out of earshot, the warrior speaks again.

“so my father said you could fight.”

joohyun resists the urge to sigh; they’re going around in circles. “that’s my selling point.”

sooyoung finally stands upright, and she grabs one of the swords, holding it out towards her. “show me then.”

joohyun laughs. so her first grasp of her new friend (friend? companion? partner? student?) is that she’s eager. and judging from the fact that she’s just had a fight before, way too eager for her own good.

(she’d die first out in the battlefield.)

she grabs the sword but does nothing with it to sooyoung, only swinging it around freely. “this is a good sword.”

when sooyoung has taken the other sword out of the dirt, joohyun begins walking to the cabin with her own in hand. “come on. let’s take these back to the weaponry.”

maybe this can be a first lesson.

“i asked you to fight.”

“i would not fight a soldier where their strength is at its lowest. that’s not of honour.”

in a moment, her sword is gone, and its tip is pointed at her neck. only a millimeter away. she almost has her neck sliced by how fast she turns her head to look at the usurper behind her, surprised.

sooyoung gives her the sliest of smirks. but her voice, as sweet as it is, is hollow. “those are the matters of men. honour is a fickle thing amongst the gods.”

joohyun feels a smile ghost her lips as she grabs the blade, feeling it cut into her hand. watches as sooyoung blinks and loosen her grip on it, allowing the older girl to turn it sideways and drive it into the ground. 

“and we learn whatever from you, do we not?”

she lets go of the blade, watching as her hand drips blood onto the dirt. the wound stings. 

her heart skips a beat as sooyoung immediately grabs it, fingertips tracing the area around the wound. her touch is delicate and it sends tingles up joohyun’s spine. she’s never been touched like this before. not even by seulgi, who’d examined her wounds a thousand times.

“you’ve told more than enough,” sooyoung murmurs. when she looks up, the gaze of her eyes is indiscernible in the blue hour.

“wait here,” she prompts, and immediately she turns to the cabin, breaking into a slow jog towards it. “i’ll get the bandages.”

joohyun stares at sooyoung’s back as the girl’s figure gets smaller and smaller, focusing on the clean slope of her shoulders. each drip of blood off her skin feels like an unforetold second.

…

the dreams have been plaguing sooyoung for as long as she can remember.

her first memory is of water. cold, rushing, stinging water, roaring past the shell of her ears and burning through all of her skin. except for one point.

her mother, or at least her memory of her mother, holds her ankle and dips sooyoung whole into the most poisonous river in the world – the river styx. in that moment, in that burning moment, the little that sooyoung has built of her mortal self in one day of birth completely burns away, except on that one point of her ankle.

it’s quite the while before she’s pulled out. she gurgles and breathes and sometimes takes in too much water, but she doesn’t die. almost all of her mortality is dead – but she doesn’t die.

her mother weeps when she holds sooyoung in her arms. caresses her face. coos and tells her  _ it’s alright, it’s alright  _ and  _ everything will be goo _ _ d now, i promise. _ wipes away the rest of the water from sooyoung’s brow. she can’t remember her mother’s face anymore but she never misses the wince in her sole action.

and that’s the problem, isn’t it? because sooyoung has gone through this too many times for a face she can’t remember. every night like apollo’s scheduled trip into the hillside, when sleep arrives, pain wracks her body and water envelopes her mind, burning and stabbing and all too hurtful, all too cruel. she was a child when she did it then; she’s not a child now. she doesn’t gurgle or breathe in, she screams and cries for help for anybody who will pull her out.

and someone always does, after hours of treacherous torture. and they hold her even when she’s gotten bigger, kisses her even when she’s whimpering in pain, wipes away the water from her brow. and all sooyoung can do is whimper, into the fabric she’s been smothered into, with her hands grasping it so tight it feels like it might break. but it never does.

and before she can make any sense of it, she wakes up. gasping, hands wandering around for anything she can hold to. the sheets, the table by her bed, the pillar by the door. anything to ground herself.

(sometimes, her hands settle for her head and grip tight. she spends those nights crying into her pillow, body rocking back and forth for any sort of relief from the pain that has become her.)

by the time she is nine, she supposes it is a way of life. a way of life just for her. not even chiron finds it surprising: instead, upon hearing her troubles he sets a lamp down and begins to paint shadows across the wall with his hands, telling her stories of the many heroes before her who had suffered from such visions. they were foretelling’s, he told her, an illusion spread before them of great grandeur. except they were not illusions. they were perseus and theseus and heracles, and as the night grew deeper and more stars came out to play alongside chiron’s fighting shadows, sooyoung quickly grew to realize she was a hero.

which is comforting, if it’s what she has. but it still doesn’t get rid of the pain in her head.

nor does it explain anything about why she keeps having the same dream about her first memory over and over again, with no start or conclusion. it’s just a moment on endless loop, unsure of where its place is in the great play.

chiron purses his lips and decides not to tell her. he tells her she must figure it out herself.

after the night with the shadows and the stars, sooyoung goes back into her room and stares at herself in the mirror.

she tries to recall the stories chiron told her, tries to picture herself in them. it almost feels ridiculous, really – all the heroes in her story are handsome, brash, beautiful, decided. and she is just a girl.

heracles. the son of zeus, the champion of mortals. muscled, dashing, smart. knowing. unquestioning to himself, questionable to others. yet right at the rightest of times.

sooyoung is not heracles. heracles is invincible with his heavy lion pelt, shielding him from every sword and arrow. they bounce off him like useless toys of the living, the act designed to strike terror into his enemies’ hearts. sooyoung does not have a lion pelt, she remembers. her teeth grit and her breathing gets a little heavier and she thinks, bitterly – she doesn’t have a lion pelt like he does. she is one. the pelt drapes off her skin because it  _ is  _ her skin. like some sick weapon of destruction gifted by the gods.

she turns to her right to stare at the knife glinting on her bedroom table. it looks like silver in the moonlight, chaos painted beautiful by artemis.

she grabs it and presses it down onto her forearm, waiting for it. the cut. the sink of metal into flesh. the  _ rippp!  _ that comes with skin coming apart. the red that blooms from veins, the red she’s been told over and over to fear, the way it drips down the skin to splatter on the ground, returning one to the earth. she keeps her eyes trained on the mirror, never tearing her focused gaze away.

the flush in her arm comes back as quickly as it leaves. in her young fit of rage she spits to the ground and throws the knife away, letting it clatter as long as it wants.

sooyoung is no heracles.

by the time she’s thirteen, the nightmares are no more but a minor headache. sooyoung stays up to avoid the pain sometimes but by the next day she’s trained combat with chiron so much exhaustion soaks her bones, making her stumble to bed unknowingly and begin her cycle of way of life. her cycle of life is really just a few things: the pain in her head, the exhaustion in her bones, and lyre lessons with chiron.

but then that cycle of life changes.

**Author's Note:**

> written in 2020 btw. leave kudos and comments if u like!
> 
> here's the playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1CAePk99A5YuNaFIPlHWAv?si=w31BVHUORcaS34aSq8m3HA


End file.
